Reflections on Education for Socially-engaged Art: Is SEA a symbolic or an actual practice?
Note: A second piece based on a book after a discussion by HK theatre scholar/critique Damian Cheng (不只藝術創作的「社會參與藝術」?) Again, it is not a response piece, but it is interesting to contrast the different focus we have on the same book. Most importantly, to gather some momentum (views) for serious thinking about community arts and socially-engaged arts.
This time I thought about musician/activist Billy Hung’s response to Damian’s piece (my translation): “What is the difference between artists doing this work and community organizers, activists and field anthropologists?” (社會參與藝術家這角色，又如何別於社區組織者、行動者和田野人類學家)
[the descriptions of the writers (critic, activities, etc.) is based on my understanding, welcome your corrections!]
This is a great little book, especially for teaching. Not that I agree with Helguera completely, but that he has concisely expressed some important principles of the socially-engaged arts for discussion. Maybe because it is so concise that some of his views seem oversimplified. There are a couple of issues I have with this book, but I am going to focus only on one.
Is SEA a symbolic or actual practice?
As I will show, SEA is an actual, not symbolic, practice. (5)
I think I have read enough of ‘either/or theories’ or definitions to realize that the reality is most often ‘both’. It is most fruitful to think about how both definitions can coexist: How can SEA (and community arts) be both an actual and a symbolic practice. Not just because people think differently, but because people see different layers and find different meanings in the same phenomenon.
I take it that the emphasis on ‘actual’ is to subvert the object-based and representational fine arts training that is still the core of arts education around the world. I like his explanation of the importance and the value of SEA being actual, but sometimes his logic of ‘why it is not symbolic’ eludes me:
For example, Paul Ramirez-Jonas’s work Key to the City (2010) revolved around a symbolic act — giving a person a key as a symbol of the city. Yet although Ramirez-Jonas’s contains a symbolic act, it is not symbolic practice but rather communicative action (or “actual” practice) — that is, the symbolic act is part of a meaningful conceptual gesture (8)
I know the key actually works, but firstly “Key to the City” references the symbolic key that given by a city that recognizes people who made significant contribution to the society. Secondly, for Ramirez to do this as an artist and calling it an artwork is to willingly take on a symbolic dimension of the work. Finally, even if we call this ‘communicative action’, isn’t all communication symbolic?
Does it matter for artists to deny or ignore the symbolic aspect of SEA? I think it does, and Nato Thompson’s Living as Form explains why.
The Power of being Actual & Symbolic
HK musician/activist/community organizer Billy Hung, reflecting on Damian’s discussion of Education, asks “What is the difference between artists doing this work and community organizers, activists and field anthropologists?”
I think this can only be answer if we embrace the coexistence of the actual and symbolic of socially-engaged arts. First, symbolic gestures have actual impact:
Symbolic gestures can be powerful and effective methods for change (Thompson, 18)
And artists (or those with similar skills) are able to use symbolic gestures in ways that others could not. Thompson calls this “symbolic manipulation”.
Researchers and scientists who feel a sense of political urgency to disseminate their findings might use the skill sets of symbolic manipulation and performativity in order to get their message out (22)
According to Thompson’s assessment of contemporary society, the symbolic is as important as the actual dimension of this practice.
Without understanding that the manipulation of symbols has become a method of production for the dominant powers in contemporary society, we cannot appreciate the forms of resistance to that power that come from numerous artists, activists, and engaged citizens. (30)
The pervasive and invasive manipulation of symbols exercised by governments and corporations blurs the boundaries of actual and symbolic. Our practice is as much real work as a message to the world about the work.
Postscript: Let’s say we accept that the community arts and the socially-engaged arts are both actual and symbolic practices, that it is also important that the work expresses a message or an image, my mind has jumped to the obsession of public image and PR consideration that sponsors are demanding of many SEA projects, is it a good or bad thing?
